I downloaded Depict tonight after seeing someone on Reddit suggest it as another multiplayer iPad game like Words with Friends. It was $0.99, and it may be the best $0.99 I’ve spent so far on an app.

It’s like Pictionary, but done in pixel art. There are five people in a game, all playing separately. One person draws while the other four have a multiple-choice guess at what he’s drawing. There are five rounds to a game, and you have one shot to guess correctly in a round. When you’re drawing, you are given only the one word you’re supposed to draw, so you don’t know what options the others are presented with. All the options are usually related items, or things that look similar.

The topics vary in difficulty, with words like ‘chiropractor’ and ‘baggage carousel’ to ‘raindrop’ and ‘wheel’. It’s pretty hilarious seeing what some people will draw to get the meaning across. One girl wrote ‘idk guys ???’ and our choices were all chess pieces. Everyone got it right because options like ‘king’ and ‘queen’ would be obvious to draw even for non-chess players, but ‘rook’ was trickier if you don’t know chess, so that was the answer. One person drew a yellow Pacman-looking ghost and it was obvious ‘ghost’ was the answer over ‘squash’, ‘pumpkin’, or ‘zombie’.

Above is an image I drew for the word ‘hot’. I think everyone guessed correctly that round.

There are achievements for Game Center, and you can log in with your Game Center account or Facebook. You can draw your own little pixelly avatars and swap them out while you’re playing a game. I’m cheshire137 so my avatar is a little Cheshire Cat. :)

If someone is too slow to draw, it skips them. You have 30 seconds to draw when it’s your turn, or you can skip your draw turn if you want. People earn more points for guessing correctly faster, or for drawing something that everyone guesses correctly. After a round is over (image drawn, guesses made), the five players are listed by score, and it shows the points you just earned in that round. The interface is simple but it stays out of your way. There’s a text chat for you to chat with the other players while you wait for the drawer to finish, too.

The game’s definitely worth $1. If anyone has any other multiplayer game suggestions for the iPad, definitely share.